Nigeria: Watch Ibejii’s new Gonto video

The video was recorded with a live orchestra and directed by A13 Films at the Terra Kulture cultural centre in Lagos. It stars Nollywood actors including Dakore Egbuson-Akande, Christian Paul, Ruby Akubueze and Emmanuel Osahor. The visuals also feature scenes from a forthcoming film by Ibejii.

The song is a reflective number, which listens as an Afro-orchestral offering and heralds its author's fifth LP. It captures the casual insensitivity of a government and the resilence of a new generation “whose defeat of fear makes confrontation inevitable,” a statement reads.

‘Gonto’ depicts instances of the oppressed resisting their oppressors, as seen in Nigeria and other parts of the world recently.

Enjoying a reputation as a storyteller, poet, thinker and romantic, Ibejii’s sound is steeped in Yoruba heritage and fused with Western influences. The musician describes his essence as “a fine balance of ‘Taiye Kehin’, the physical and the transcendent, time-worn and timeless.” His craft is also characterised by the use of folklore, metaphors and vernacular to deliver tales of love and loss. 

Speaking about his identity and sound in an interview with Music In Africa last year, the artist said: “Ibejii is less man and more persona. Ibejii is less celebrity and more 'journey'. So it's not about the man but more about the music. It's not that there is anything hidden, but the idea here is to speak about the music rather than the character behind the music.”

Ibejii is behind the albums Greenwhitedope (2017), Tribal Marks (2018), MSML (2019) and Ìlù Ìlú (2020), as well as Intermission, a 6-track electro-soul EP that he says “explores the emotional rollercoaster foisted by the combination of a global health pandemic, a global movement for racial justice, a campaign for the end of police brutality that ended in a crushing emotional event, and the daily challenge of keeping it together in aloneness, social isolation and physical lockdown.”